Counter Fraud, Bribery and Corruption
Counter Fraud, Bribery and Corruption
The Care Inspectorate will:
- take all reasonable steps to prevent fraud and corruption
- ensure we have processes in place to detect fraud and corruption wherever possible
- investigate fraud and corruption where it is detected or reported
- pursue appropriate formal action against those involved in fraudulent or corrupt activities
We will take action where fraud, bribery or corruption has been found to have been committed in accordance with our Formal Action Policy.
What to do if you suspect fraud, bribery or corruption
If you are an employee of the Care Inspectorate please follow our internal procedures for reporting concerns.
If you are not an employee of the Care Inspectorate and you believe that there is fraudulent activity taking place, please report this using the details below or you may wish to report your concerns directly to the police.
You can contact the Care Inspectorate directly:
Jackie Mackenzie
Executive Director Corporate and Customer Services
(Fraud Champion)
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Kenny Dick
Head of Finance and Corporate Governance
(Fraud Liasion Officer)
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Or you can write to Jackie or Kenny at the address below:
Care Inspectorate
Compass House
11 Riverside drive
Dundee
DD1 4NY
You can if you prefer, report your concerns to Audit Scotland.
Further detail on the Care Inspectorate’s counter fraud, bribery and corruption approach can be found here.
Our position statement on Modern Slavery
What is Modern Slavery?
We recognise that workers recruited from overseas are a hugely valuable and important part of Scotland’s social care workforce.
Modern slavery is complex; but simply put, it describes a situation where someone is made to do something, and another person gains from this. Modern slavery is about being exploited and completely controlled by someone else, without being able to leave or belief that you cannot leave through threats by person in control. It includes
human trafficking, slavery, servitude and forced compulsory labour.
Modern slavery is the deception or coercion of a person for the purpose of exploitation.
Modern slavery can be present in any social care setting and victims could be either staff working in a service or people who are using a service.
Our strategic aim
We will constructively work with partners to end modern day slavery in Scotland’s social care system.
Our regulatory response
Our purpose is to ensure registered care services provide people with safe, highquality care and to encourage services to improve.
We will be alert to potential cases of modern slavery and to listen sensitively and compassionately when people raise issues with us. We will respond in the following ways:
- If we receive or discover information that may indicate modern slavery, we will identify and record this threat. We will do this even if the person contacting us does not refer to it as modern slavery.
- We will refer identified and potential victims through our established safeguarding referral routes.
- We will monitor registration applications to check for warning si-gns of potential exploitation of skilled workers from overseas.
- We will seek out early indication that sponsor licenses are being exploited by working closely with Home Office and other partners.
- We will not hesitate to take action including proportionate regulatory and enforcement action where modern slavery and unethical recruitment practises pose a potential risk of harm.
- We will work with other organisations to prevent, disrupt and reduce the likelihood of modern slavery in social care.
- We will monitor the modern slavery situation by submitting reports and updates to SMG and ET quarterly or yearly.
- To support our work, we will develop staff awareness/training and procedures.
Archived updates
Staying up to date and getting in touch
Archived updates
Archived Updates
- Covid-19 FAQ's
- Covid-19 notifications
- Inspection during Covid-19
- Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
- Near Me video calls
- Registrations
- Operating your care service
- Information for people and their carers
You can find older updates by clicking the relevant year below:
Justice
Our approach
The Care Inspectorate was tasked by the Scottish Government to lead on scrutiny and assurance to support the implementation of the community justice model and provide up-to-date scrutiny and assurance of justice social work.
The Community Justice (Scotland) Act 2016 introduced the current model of community justice. The Scottish Government outline the priorities in the national strategy for community justice.
The Act also established a national body, Community Justice Scotland to oversee community justice and introduce requirements to achieve national and local outcomes. These are highlighted within an Outcomes, Performance and Improvement Framework (OPIF).
The Scottish Government also commissioned the Care Inspectorate to develop a guide to self-evaluation for community justice in Scotland. The self-evaluation guide aligns to the national strategy and the OPI Framework (OPIF).
The guide is primarily for community justice partnerships to support continuous improvement. It also informs our approach to scrutiny and assurance of justice social work.
Since the strategic justice strategic team was established in 2018, we have undertaken a range of scrutiny, assurance and improvement activities in collaboration with a number of partners. We published an overview report in December 2021 which details our work and summarises the key findings.
How we do it
For detail on the methods we have used below, follow this link.
- Justice social work: inspections of community payback orders
- Community justice partnerships: supported and validated self-evaluation
- Community justice social work: throughcare review
- Our other work with scrutiny partners
Getting involved
We are committed to meaningfully involving people with lived experience of the justice system in our scrutiny, assurance and improvement activities. We want to develop an ethical, person-centred approach that promotes best practice. A pilot approach was developed in partnership with a national third sector agency. However, intended activities were disrupted by Covid-19. We aim to progress this work in 2022/23.
If you have any questions about our work please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
How we do it
Justice social work: inspection of community payback orders
In our overview report published December 2021, we presented the key findings aggregated across all five inspections.
Between September 2018 and November 2020, we completed five inspections of justice social work services with a particular focus on community payback orders in these areas:
- Scottish Borders
- West Dunbartonshire
- Inverclyde
- Dumfries and Galloway
- Aberdeen City.
We produced an inspection guide for this activity. In summary the inspection methodology involved:
- submission of a self-evaluation by each local authority area
- review of a representative sample of relevant records of people who were or had been subject to a community payback order
- interviews with people currently subject to a community payback order
- focus groups and interviews with members of staff, partner agencies and stakeholders, and senior managers, chief officers, elected members with responsibility for community justice social work
- verbal feedback to the local authority on findings based on the analysis and evaluation of all aspects of the inspection
- publication of an inspection report for each participating local authority area that included evidence-based evaluations of key quality indicators using a six-point scale.
Community justice partnerships: supported and validated self-evaluation
Between 2018 and 2020, we worked in partnership with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland (HMICS) to support the implementation of the new community justice model through a validated self-evaluation approach. We carried out assurance activities across the following five community justice partnerships, one of which incorporated three local authority areas:
- North Lanarkshire (did not involve HMICS)
- Clackmannanshire
- Ayrshire (North, South and East)
- Shetland
- East Lothian
For more information on the supported and validated self-evaluation methodology please refer to our guidance and additional information. In summary our activity included:
- support and guidance from a strategic inspector for partnership areas to undertake self-evaluation
- submission of a self-evaluation by the partnership
- analysis of the submitted documents by the Care Inspectorate/HMICS team
- follow-up activities with the partnership to explore any areas of uncertainty (these included visits, interviews and focus groups)
- verbal feedback on the findings to each partnership based on the analysis of all the evidence gathered
- publication of the validation letter.
Community justice social work: throughcare review
The Scottish Government established the national criminal justice Recover, Renew, Transform (RRT) programme in response to the ongoing impact of Covid-19 on the justice system in Scotland. One of the tasks of the Recovery of Community Justice and Prevention of Offending sub-group was to explore breach of licence and recall to prison. This was to further understand recall and related processes to reduce the number of people being recalled to custody, where appropriate.
In March 2021, the Care Inspectorate received a request from the sub-group to undertake a focused piece of work relating to breach of licence/recall to custody. The strategic justice team undertook a review of throughcare with a primary focus on community justice social work practice.
The review sought to:
- identify potential barriers to reintegration; and
- seek assurance that community justice social work contributions to breach and recall processes were operating as they should.
As part of the review, we also gathered the views of individuals from across Scotland who had been recalled to prison following a breach of their throughcare licence conditions.
We published a report of our findings in September 2021. The report contains more detail on the methods we used.
Our collaborative work with scrutiny and improvement partners
We have a long-standing commitment to contribute to inspections of prisons and other institutions led by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons in Scotland (HMIPS). Over the past three years, our contribution has been led by the strategic justice team with support from other strategic colleagues as appropriate. Throughout 2020/2021, we contributed to HMIPS Covid-19 liaison activities through on-site visits and remote contact with community agencies.
Throughout 2021/2022, we will continue to work with scrutiny and justice partners to contribute to the thematic prison review of risk management, progression and early release.
A separate piece of collaborative work will focus on the extent to which community justice partners are delivering on national priorities relating to early intervention and prevention.
In July 2023, we commenced a joint thematic review of prison-based social work, in partnership with His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons in Scotland (HMIPS). This thematic review will consider the strengths and challenges in the governance, leadership, and accountability of prison-based social work services in Scotland. The full Terms of Reference for the review can be found here. This work will conclude in April 2024.
Week by week guide
Our joint inspections of services for children at risk of harm last for around 22 weeks in total from the notification letter being received by the partnership being inspected to the report being published. The actual timespan may be longer if the period of the inspection includes school or public holidays.
Each inspection begins with a preparation stage, is then conducted over three phases, and concludes with a reporting stage. More information about what happens during each of these is available here:
We will share information about the scope and process of the inspection and the rationale for this, during scheduled meetings with partnership representatives at the start of and during the inspection. We will discuss which scrutiny activities will best help us to clarify any areas of uncertainty.
Joint inspections of services for adults
Our approach
The Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act 2014 sets the legislative framework for integrating adult health and social care.
Integrating health and social care services is important to ensure that people have quick access to the range of services and support they need, that their care feels seamless to them and that they experience good outcomes and high standards of support. This is particularly vital for the increasing numbers of people with multiple, complex, long-term conditions in Scotland.
Since April 2017, the Care Inspectorate and Healthcare Improvement Scotland have had joint statutory responsibility to inspect and support improvement in the strategic planning and commissioning of integrated approaches.
In 2019, the Ministerial Strategic Group (MSG) for Health and Community Care asked us to further develop our joint inspections to focus on how integration impacts on people’s outcomes, to consider the performance of the whole health and social care partnership and to ensure a balanced focus across health and social care provision.
In response to the MSG recommendation, the Care Inspectorate and Healthcare Improvement Scotland have reviewed our joint inspection methodology to answer the following question:
“How effectively is the partnership working together, strategically and operationally, to deliver seamless services that achieve good health and wellbeing outcomes for adults?”
In order to address the question over the broad spectrum of adult health and social care services, we will conduct a rolling programme of themed inspections, looking at how integration of services positively supports people’s experiences and outcomes. It’s important to note that these thematic inspections are not considering the quality of specialist care for each care group but are simply a means of identifying groups of people with similar or shared experiences through which to understand if health and social care integration arrangements are resulting in good outcomes. In this way, we’re looking at integration through the lens of different care groups which, taken together, will in time build a picture of what is happening more broadly in health and social care integration and how this is experienced by people and the outcomes achieved.
How we do it
Our inspections last for a number of months. We work closely with the partnership to co-ordinate our inspection activities.
We have a range of ways to gather information that will help us to assess how integrated services in the area are helping to improve outcomes for people and their unpaid carers. These include:
- asking for information from the partnership
- speaking to people who use health and social care services and their unpaid carers
- speaking with staff, managers and leaders across the partnership
- reading people’s records.
We communicate regularly with the partnership and keep them up to date with our findings.
After the inspection, we publish a report about our findings on the Care Inspectorate’s and Healthcare Improvement Scotland’s websites. The report explains what we have found, identifies strengths and points out areas that could be improved. We agree an Improvement plan with the partnership to address those areas.
Getting involved
The voices of people who use health and social care services and of their unpaid carers are at the centre of our inspection. We will use as many opportunities as we can to get people involved and talk to them about their experiences of health and social care services.
We have developed an engagement framework to support all our engagement activity. The framework sets out 12 statements about positive outcomes and experiences that we will speak with people about.
More information
You can find full information about joint adult inspections:
- The Partnership guide sets out the inspection process step by step and provides all the information that partnerships need to manage their part in the inspection.
- The Quality Indicator Framework (QIF) explains the criteria we use to evaluate quality in our inspections
- The Engagement framework provides a set of “I” statements to help us consider the experience of people who use health and social care services and their unpaid carers. It underpins all the engagement with people and unpaid carers that takes place during the inspection.
- Our joint inspection reports can be found here.
- The record review template and record review guidance supports our reading of health, social work and social care records. The current version is used to read the records of people living with mental illness.